Philippians 4: 4-7
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
You could write 82 separate devotions out of those four verses but today I want to concentrate on Philippians 4:4 which gives us the repeated command to rejoice. Rejoicing is discussed plenty in the book of Philippians. Rejoicing is also the end product of our faith journey...our destiny through God. Yet it's a discipline we take for granted. In fact I'd wager most of us don't even think of it as a faith discipline at all!
Click through to read more about this tragic phenomenon and what we can do about it...
Most folks depend on circumstances to provide a source of rejoicing. Celebration becomes a waiting game. Wait for your birthday, wait for a wedding, wait for retirement, wait until you win the lottery. All of those sources have two things in common: they're external and they're not here yet. Therefore rejoicing becomes something we do someday, not every day.
And yet we read in Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"
Rejoicing isn't meant to be a passive waiting game. It's an active impulse, something you do rather than something that happens to you every once in a while. People of faith need to approach each day and each situation ready to rejoice! This requires practice, especially in a world that teaches us to moan about the littlest inconveniences even when great things are happening around us. Perhaps our instinct tells us not to believe anything that seems too good...to look for the catch so we don't get taken. Perhaps we're not happy unless we have something to complain about. Whatever the cause, we seem far more practiced in finding fault than in rejoicing over goodness.
This can be especially true of church people. How quickly does, "Yes! We have children in our congregation!" become, "Gee...those kids are loud"? The reputation of a youth group event attended by forty young people can be scuttled by a single, "They left a pop can on a windowsill." The hymns are too new. No, they're too old. No, they're too Scandinavian. No, they're not Scandinavian enough. "This isn't like it was when [insert repository of idyllic past memories here]!" Like the Grinch among Whos, we evidence a remarkable capacity to find the speck of annoyance in even the most blindingly joyful of environments.
Looking for the good in situations, circumstances, and people is an indispensable part of faith. God IS goodness, after all. Looking for the good in things is another way of looking for GOD in things. Doing the opposite? I don't know what we're looking for there, but I'm pretty sure we're better off not finding it.
And when we begin to see goodness in the people and things of our lives our impulse should be to rejoice! We need to speak about and celebrate the things we find. We need to be thankful much more than we are and to express that thanks to God and to each other.
The question will arise, "What about when sad things happen? Are we supposed to fake rejoicing?" Not at all! We think of joy and sorrow as opposites. In reality they're siblings. When we mourn we are remembering something good, some joyful moment. The cycle of life is finding joy, sorrowing in realizing that this joy is temporary, but finding even greater cause to celebrate in God's promise of eternal redemption. Joy and sorrow mingle together naturally, indistinguishably. You can't really know one without also embracing the other.
Dealing with joy flowing into sorrow and into joy again is difficult and scary sometimes. It takes a lot of faith, plus the admission that it's not really in your power to control the times and places of either. I suspect this is why many of us settle for the cheaper option of crankiness. It's not as good as joy--probably not even as good as genuine sorrow--but we're in control of it and we can ensure that the cranky, fault-finding attitude will remain stable, secure, and unchanging as long as we live. We trade God's rich, full, and tumultuous journey for a completely predictable and hollow one of our own making.
Sorrow is neither the enemy of joy nor its opposite. Sorrow is the interlude between losing the last great joy and seeing the next. As such it should be expressed and accepted fully, as it is a testimony to joy. We cannot rejoice rightly together if we do not also sorrow together well.
The true enemies and opposites of joy are apathy and its cousin cynicism. Apathy does not engage the world and its people enough to find the joy in them. Cynicism destroys the joy other people find and bring. We must be careful not to let these creep into our faith life. Sorrow and grief aren't the work of the devil. His message is, "Why should you care either way?"
The antidote to this poisonous message is to be active in the world, engaged with its people, and always ready to find a reason to rejoice. Believe God has put something good in the world even if you're having a hard time seeing it. Be stubborn about that and keep looking. Your perseverance will be rewarded. All of a sudden you'll start seeing blessings in children and youth, in voices lifted in song, in spouses and friends, in daily labor and daily bread. When the world becomes a miracle faith blossoms. That is the direct result of joy and rejoicing.
Be active in rejoicing this week. Find God in goodness and look for goodness everywhere you go. You will find the peace that God promises and find your heart not only guarded, but expanded through faith.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
